


Strange days have found us

by Youarenothuman



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Prank Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Youarenothuman/pseuds/Youarenothuman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ginger and an Italian walk into a room. Dick looks up to see both Malarkey and Perconte grinning at him and the first words out of his mouth are: </p><p>"Where’s George Luz?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange days have found us

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from 'Strange Days' by the Doors.
> 
> This fic includes swearing and pairing, in a background kind of way. 
> 
> I recommend doing these pranks to anyone who annoys you :) 
> 
> Tumblr post here: http://sirmordreds.tumblr.com/post/56683062627/band-of-brothers-au-college-prank-wars-a

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. But in reality, bunching a group of teenagers together was never going to give anything else.

It starts with Luz and Perconte, two roommates on the first floor under Dick Winters's rule. It is the way Luz's old beat up 4x4 nearly ran the little Italian over, and instead of getting pissed, they'd fallen about laughing.

*

Various people arrive over the course of the first day back at school, and slowly George and Perco are joined by Skip, named after his complete and utterly heap of junk that he calls his car, and a Malarkey who laughs so loudly that he fell off his chair. Then "Wild" Bill and Toye, two best friends, who had turned up in flower necklaces and stupidly bold shorts.

 

Whereas as the other more sensible kids go upstairs to meet the people on their floor and unpack, this group of jokers stay downstairs in the lounge until late. And when Buck and Welsh, the top floor RAs,  finally come down to send them to bed, they are quickly roped into the younger ones animated discussions.

Before the end of the night, in fact at 10:31 exactly, a Prank War is declared.

*

It starts nice and slowly. And unexpectedly. Randleman comes down  one morning to discover that his brand new Porsche, a gift for his birthday, has been wrapped in shrink wrap. It takes Martin and him two hours to get it all off without scratching the paintwork. Luz films it all with his camera.

What he hadn't expected from the none jokers was revenge.

*

As revenge's go, it's cruel. An anonymous text, later to be discovered to have been sent without Skinny's request (who just happened to be Randleman's roommate), tips Luz off about the weird smell in his car. Luz is heartbroken to find a dead fish on his driver's seat, smelling out the whole car.

He isn't as heartbroken as Skip, Perconte and Malarkey are when they realize a week later, that the same prank had been pulled on them, they just haven't used their cars that week.

The cars remain untouched, airing out, for three weeks.

Surprising Bill and Toye's cars are left untouched.

*

The next time, only a few days later, Luz has a smarter idea. Instead of targeting a precise person, he'll have to go around annoying everyone. And that's when he realizes an unlikely fact about the flooring plan. The RA's rooms are right next to the stairs on each floor. And in every room next to them, they have stuck the troublemakers, probably to keep a better eye on them. As so, Perco and Luz are next to Dick and Lew, Skip and Penkala next to Speirs and Lipton and on the top floor, Bill and Toye next to Buck and Harry.

This means the whole other end of the corridor is fair play, well apart from Malarkey, but he'll have to deal with it.

That same day, Toye and Bill go shopping.

*

At midnight, from the second room on each floor, emerge two figures, armed with butter and Vaseline.  Having thought this out, they start at the other end of their respective corridors, near the elevators, and slowly butter the floor, starting at the sides and working in. As they work, they pour a bit of Vaseline onto each door knob. On the second floor, Muck makes a certain joke about "buttering the knob" that has Penkala laughing so much he nearly falls and gives the whole game away.

After finally reaching their own room, they stop, so that both they and the RA's have no problems in the morning. Apart from Toye and Bill. They butter the whole floor, proving just how evil they really are.

*

The next morning, Lewis stumbles out of his and Dick's room, rubbing his eyes in sleepiness. As several loud thuds make the ground beneath him tremble, he looks down the hall to see four teenagers desperately sliding over the floor and trying to grip onto the slippery walls.  Heffron and Malarkey are taking it with good grace, slipping on the floor because they are laughing too much, trying to hold onto each other in an effort to remain upright. Skinny, so named because he shares a room next to the strongly built Randleman, and Randleman himself look more like Lewis imagines he looks like with a hangover, lying down on the floor and groaning.

Smirking to himself, Lewis starts to turn around and sees Perco run past him and try gliding down the hallway. It is going well until Malarkey grabs for his ankle and brings him down with them.

Behind him, as always, Luz is recording.

*

Everyone in the building sports bruises for two weeks and all pranks are postponed.

*

The next pranks come from an unlikely source. Initially it is Buck and Harry's form of revenge, but they needed a second key in order to access the dorm in the day, so Buck had to ask for the key off either Dick or Speirs. He asks Speirs eventually, deciding that Ron is more likely to approve of rule breaking than Dick. Ron tells Winters anyway, and after the red head had shared a look with Lewis, Dick surprises everyone, apart from Lipton who always knows everything, when he says he will participate in bringing the young ones down a few notches.

And soon, as the guys work and type out their essays in Currahee classrooms and study halls, the RA's get to work.

*

 

The third floor's form of revenge is the most obvious and is finished only minutes before Dick opens up the dorm to the boys.

As the boys file back to 101st, Webster looks up to see beds, suitcases and desks hanging out of the second room on the third floor, all of them held back by strong thick ropes. He frowns before turning around to Toye.

"Do you seriously still have a Spiderman duvet?"

The tougher guy glares and says a surprised and ashamed yes, asking how he knows. Webster points upwards.

Bill and Toye practically let out war cries and rush off upstairs to the sound of Welsh's laughter.

Luz gets his camcorder out of his backpack.

*

Skip and Penkala's room is turned completely upside down by Ron and Lipton. Their beds are drilled to the ceiling, the duvet and mattress stuck down. Even the closet is filled with fake upside down shirts. Upon entering the room under their RA's heavy gaze, they both have completely different reactions. Penkala, ever the practical one, lets out a dismayed: "Where are we going to sleep?" whereas, with delight shining in his eyes, Skip walks over to his upside down desk and pokes his work books, wondering how they had stuck them down.

*

Perconte and Luz's is a surprise and a mystery. Their room has simply been cleared by Nixon and Winters. Not the cleared as in a put way kind of way, but in a missing kind of way.  The room is empty. Everything gone, bed and all. Even the posters on the walls. As everyone climbs between the floors, checking out each floor's joke, nobody can find their stuff. Winters just smiles, a little dangerously, and Lewis mocks their ongoing attempts to find the furniture with a gleam in his eye.

Eventually, Roe, entering last to the dorm, a few hours later than everyone else and missing the excitement, texts Perconte, asking if he is looking for a RedBull poster. Everyone races downstairs to Roe to find him standing, looking very amused, in front of the elevator, unable to access the top floor because of the "bedroom" set up in there.

In everyone's quest to check out each floor, people had been taking the stairs nearer the front door, but Roe had missed all of the other pranks and had, tired after a long day's work, tried to take an unsuccessful trip in the elevator to his room on the third floor.

"Did I miss something?"

Luz just hands him the camcorder.

*

After that it's the Christmas holidays, and everyone parts ways for the winter holidays.

Liebgott sighs in relief, thankful that he'll finally get a few weeks off from all the pranks.

He doesn't. No one does.

It's Christmas after all, a season for sharing and goodwill.

*

Webster gets a book from Heffron. The book?  Fifty Shades of Grey. It's embarrassing to have to open it up in front of his strict, straight laced parents. Webster really should have known better really than to open any of his school gifts here. But Heffron's also made the effort to read the book and highlight certain parts, adding little commentary in the borders. And so, for that very reason, he reads it, mostly laughing over Heffron's side comments ("is that every a human sound?" and "DOWN THERE Webster, you know what I mean. The thing, the good stuff, the gift your parents bestowed upon you!") until he reaches the last page where Heffron has simply written.

_Maybe this can help you with your Liebgott problem._

Webster wasn't aware he had a Liebgott problem until that point. And now he can't stop thinking about it.

*

Roe does Guarnere's gift. He lives the closest and in all honestly, he's probably one of the only boys not scared of what Bill will send his way afterwards.

And so Bill has an entirely normal Xmas, to his surprise. He receives a new pair of sunglasses from Toye, to whom he'd brought a new bed cover (Batman this time, he is sick of Spiderman), money from his parents, an actual bike from his parents. But every gift he opens, he flinches, waiting for it to jump on him. Everything is perfectly, and boringly, normal. Until the whole Christmas tree starts turning around on itself, spinning at alarming speeds.

Bill swears he didn't freak out, but his older sister, won over by Luz's charms, had thoughtfully recorded the scene.

 

*

 

Nixon spends his day with his parents, around a formal dinner table. They don't exchange presents, it's the usual for them, Nixon has enough money to get what he wants when he wants. So he's not expecting anything. But then his father takes him out back that evening, and hands him a set of keys and lets him enter the garage by himself. Ron walks in, a little confused. Well, he knows he's been giving a car, but why now?

He clicks the unlock button and nearly jumps in the air when a weird : "Bwaaaaaahhh" comes out of his beeper. He's so shocked, staring at his hand, that he misses which car it unlocks. So this time he clicks it again, that stupidly amusing sound coming out of the key again. Definitely someone at the dorm's invention, and only Dick knows his parents. Either way, the beeper seems to enable something, not on a car, but a bike. A motorbike. A Harley Davidson in fact. And as he approaches the bike, he notices a screaming Rabbid Rabbit tied to the front of it, a bottle of whiskey in its arms with a sweet "To match your whiskey eyes." scribbled on it.  Definitely Dick.

 

*

 

Harry, the only boy with an actual girlfriend with whom to spend the holidays, gets a three month prescription to a gay dating site. Kitty nearly pisses herself laughing.

 

*

 

Liebgott starts receiving weird phone calls from dodgy sounding men about his "boxset". This goes on for a week before Smokey, his roommate, sends him a link to a get rid of your junk website. Liebgott's number is on there, underneath a notice that he is giving away his old, and used, porn boxset.

 

*

 

Powers, nicknamed Shifty now by the boys for somehow not only staying out off trouble in the prank war, but for managing not to slip over once on the buttered floorboards, receives a few Disney films from Penkala. As he settles down to watch the Lion King, thankfully by himself, the movie cuts out to show lions mating. With Luz's commentary. For two hours. He knows, he fast forwarded to check. He doesn't bother trying to watch the Bee movie or Ratatouille

 

*

 

Malarkey gets woken up by Skip under his window with a boombox. Which is romantic for all of two seconds before the music switches to Irish dancing music and he gets to watch Muck dance for at least thirty minutes. He records it to send to George as proof.

 

*

 

After Christmas, it is revealed that Luz has created a YouTube account about them, posting all their videos, and links to Joe's porn set and Harry's dating account. They already have a thousand subscribers.

 

*

 

When they all finally trample back to Currahee, Luz suggests a camping trip. Dick shoots him down so fast that Perconte doesn't even get a chance to cry out in excitement. As Luz sulks, he subscribes Dick to as many online newspaper's as he can find and waits for the RA's inbox to fill up.

 

*

 

In February, Powers calls the elevator to head up to his room. As he balances his books on his hips, the lift's doors open to reveal Bill and Toye in there, dressed all in black.

"Get in."

He gets escorted up in the lift, the two of them looming behind him like bodyguards. He doesn't feel scared, they are his friends, but he's a little afraid of what's about to come.

 

*

 

The next prank is all Powers idea. It had always started with Luz, and then revenge was rewarded. But this time, Luz says he doesn't want to prank them, scared that he'll copy one of the ideas that people have been sending to the online account. And so the duty falls to Powers.

 

*

 

Pant Pandora. That's what they call it. At midnight, all the boys from the third floor, even Roe, sneak down and into everyone's rooms. They rummage through every draw, grabbing everyone's underwear. There are a few close calls, Speirs gets up to get a drink, but is too sleepy to notice Hoob in the corner. Welsh enters to find Nixon and Winters sleeping in the same bed. He barely blinks.

Roe enters Heffron's room, but for some reason, Malarkey's not in his bed. He remains frozen for a few minutes until he remembers Malarkey's away on a school trip to go see cows or something. So he sneaks over to Babe's bedside table and pulls out his underwear and puts it in the bin bag he's carrying. When he looks at Heffron's face, the ginger is fast asleep, a bit of drool on the edge of his lip. Roe laughs quietly, but Heffron stirs anyway. Roe eyes go wide as he thinks of all possible bailouts and reasons why he could be found kneeling at Babe's side as he sleeps. But the other boy just puts a lip to Roe's lips, his eyes not even open.

"Shhh Gene, I'm sleeping."

And then kisses Roe on the lips. Just a peck. Before rolling back over and dropping off to sleep.

Eugene waits until they have stored everyone's underwear in the freezer's before crawling back to bed to freak out over Babe's kiss.

 

*

 

 It's unofficial knowledge that both Winters and Lewis are off limits, that Roe won't be interested in you if you aren't a certain Babe Heffron, that if you talk badly about Lipton (not that anyone ever would) in front of Speirs, you'll end up in a ditch with your kidneys on the black market, that no one will ever make Skip laugh like Malarkey does, and that Webster and Liebgott are too committed to driving each other up the wall that they have no time to spare for anyone else. It's just the way the 101st works.

 

*

 

The two floors go for a week surviving in swimming trunks until they start threatening the third floor with actual murder.  When they finally retrieve their underwear, it takes two days for it to defrost.

 

*

 

George Luz finally gets his camping trip.

Well, he doesn't get the tents, so he makes one huge blanket fort, all across an entire floor.

There's no outdoors to speak off, so he pours dirt into the toilets (Dick tells him off personally for this at the end and makes him clean it himself in huge long pink gloves) and prods in a few flowers.

There's no wildlife, so he scatters corn around Tabert and Webster's room and puts in two chickens. He gives them to Webster and Tab because, who knows what Skip and Penkala would do (take them to class it turns out, because they steal them from Web and Tab anyway the next day) and Luz is scared Liebgott will try cooking them.

He doesn't get a campfire. So he orders twenty pizzas, all from different companies and has them arrive all at the same time. Speirs gets to deal with them, a corner of his mouth turned up into what is definitely not a smile.

And, for the hell of it, Luz makes everyone dress like a monster from Monsters Inc. Of course, Muck finds a dark wig, secures his piggy tails and comes as Boo, the one person who isn't a Monster in the movie. (Skip argues that the little girl scared the freak out of him more than the actual monsters, because she "just kept popping out of nowhere").

And when Luz finally gets to sleep, head on Randleman's leg and Penkala on his, he thinks maybe this is better than going outside with the mosquito's anyway.

 

*

 

Things are calm at 101st, Currahee.

Dick worries.

 

*

 

Luz keeps Dick on edge. He clingfilms the toilets. He sends both Perco and Malarkey to speak to Dick so that Dick looks around frantically for Luz, asking "oh no, where's the third one?".

But Luz keeps low, he's biding his time.

 

*

 

Dick prays that Luz doesn't do anything on the lead up and throughout finals week.

He doesn't.

 He stays down in the lounge, as always the center of attention and surrounded by friends, but he's working, studying, passing on lecture notes and making sure everyone remains as destressed as possible.

Dick's oddly proud of him.

 

*

 

Then of course the finals end and Luz organizes a lawnmower relay race between the three floors.

Dick's floor wins, oddly enough thanks to Nixon.

 

*

 

But still, nothing huge. Not a peep out of Luz. Dick's expecting a huge final and amuses himself in class imagining what's heading his way, no longer paying attention to the professor anyway because Nixon has taken to massaging his hair.

 

*

 

Luz starts poker nights.

 

*

 

After two weeks, Luz has conned everyone out of their money.

 

*

 

"You know Dick, he's probably trying to save up in order to buy something for his last prank."

"That is not very encouraging of you Nix."

 

*

 

The end of the year rolls in and the 101st get ready to say goodbye, even though they'll be seeing each other soon when Luz gets his proper camping trip together, probably in a field of cows.

Everyone passes their finals, which makes Dick grin so wide his cheeks will hurt for weeks afterwards. He gets to personally hand each member of his floor the certificate and shake their hand.

Buck, former  Captain of the baseball team, gets recruited.

Webster wins an award for his writing.

Liebgott, with Webster's help, actually publishes a cookbook.

Martin gets promoted to Head Boy.

Roe starts working as a nurse on his spare days.

Muck gets a summer job offer as a comedian. An actual stand up act.

Nixon still drives around on a bike that has a Rabbid Rabbit on the front.

Harry has at least thirty asks in his inbox from the dating site.

Malarkey finally learns Irish dancing off Skip. Well they all have their own dreams.

Their prankster YouTube channel, 5 thousand subscribers, with some of their best jokes coming in at more than 10 million views.

And as for Luz's grand final? Well.....

"So guys, guess who managed to charm their way into being a RA next year?!"


End file.
